Meet the $10k-a-day private firefighters who’ve ignited a burning resentment in LA…the city where the super-rich can pay to save their homes

With its rundown neighborhoods and tent cities lined with street after street of opulent mansions, Los Angeles has always been a city sharply divided between the haves and the have-nots.

As the city is consumed by deadly wildfires, a new financial divide is emerging: whether or not you have access to highly paid private firefighters to ensure your home is spared from the flames – even if your neighbors’ properties are among the burn to the ground? a crispy one.

Although these private companies typically only work with local governments and insurance companies, the desperation of wealthy Los Angelino homeowners is so great that they are contacting them directly.

And, apparently, paying wildly over the odds. A typical two-man private fire crew with a small vehicle can cost $3,000 per day, while a much larger 20-man team costs $10,000 per day.

Chris Dunn, owner of private fire company Covered 6, told the Mail his phone was “ringing red” with pleas for help.

With some desperate millionaires vowing to ‘pay any amount’ to save their homes, it is claimed some companies can now charge as much as £2,000 per hour.

Customers who can afford those kinds of rates usually have huge swimming pools, which is fortunate because — with the fire hydrants serving the city without water — they can suck what they need from their pools.

No one has complained about LA’s overwhelmed political leaders who have called in firefighting help from the US, Canada and Mexico. But private firefighters are a whole different matter.

Americans have long tolerated the many consequences of wild income inequality, but when it comes to the wealthy saving their mansions at the expense of others, their patience has finally run out.

Like private schools and health care companies, such fire companies claim to help everyone by supplementing overstretched government resources.

They also emphasize that they are not just protecting the wealthy, as 90 percent of the homes covered by their insurance companies are typically of average value. (The situation looks different in LA, they add, because so many are multi-million dollar homes.)

Critics counter that these outfits are actually a hindrance rather than a help because they compete for precious resources, including water, and get in the way of other firefighters.

And while private fire bosses insist they bring their own water or draw it from customers’ pools rather than hooking them up to street hydrants, critics wonder how they’ll cope when these two sources inevitably run out during LA’s ongoing wildfires.

Some private fire companies have admitted that, if necessary, they will use fire hydrants or other water sources, such as lakes and ponds, which government firefighters will also rely on.

These companies first came to the attention of the general public in the US in 2018 when someone helped save the home of rapper Kanye West and his then-wife Kim Kardashian in the gated LA community of Hidden Hills from the wildfire in Woolsey that year.

Some neighbors praised the couple and said the intervention, which involved digging a series of trenches to create a firebreak, had also saved their own homes.

But opinions about the super-rich and their hired firefighters have hardened considerably as the destruction continues in LA.

Devastating photos have shown streets reduced to ash and rubble, save for a few favorite people – sometimes with a small team of private firefighters parked vigilantly outside as the rest of the street smolders.

LA was once a city famous for admiring the rich and famous who live there, but Hollywood celebrities are losing their luster. Some blame the pandemic, when so many of them seemed tone-deaf as they posted smug videos on social media from their luxurious mansions.

As a result, affluent locals who have publicly admitted to using, or attempted to recruit, private firefighters have faced the wrath of their fellow citizens, many of whom have expressed outrage at the mere idea that there is even only two firefighters could be. -tier system when it comes to extinguishing fires.

Keith Wasserman, a millionaire real estate investor who had previously boasted online about how he avoids paying taxes, was engulfed in his own personal firestorm on social media after posting on Protect palisades? We need to act quickly here. All the neighbors’ houses are burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.’

An online critic denounced Wasserman’s “incredible nerve,” noting, “His family has been evacuated and he’s trying to hire private firefighters to risk their lives to save a house he’s sure he has insured.” Incredibly tone deaf.”

Another said: ‘I swear I never know certain things exist until rich people are in trouble. Private firefighters?? That’s real??.” Wasserman has since removed his profile from the website.

Adam Leber, a Hollywood agent whose clients included singers Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears, got into similar trouble when he admitted that his home was protected by a private firefighting company, All Risk Shield, with an annual retainer of $6,000 after a fire last year.

They rushed in to save his mansion in the Hollywood Hills as he left the 6,000-square-foot home with his wife and three-year-old daughter and headed to their second home in another part of California.

“The rich are not affected by anything, not even cataclysmic natural disasters,” one X user complained. “Private and firefighter should not be in the same sentence.”

Leber came to his defense, telling the New York Times, “I did what any person on earth would do… I was 1,000 percent sure my house was ready and the neighborhood was ready.”

He continues, “The team brought in their own water and then took water from his pool. They didn’t use the fire hydrants. That’s a big misconception.’

However, fire department union leaders – who have long had a rocky relationship with private companies whose staff are often not in unions – disagree.

Brian Rice, president of California Professional Firefighters, which represents 35,000 members, said this week that such fire departments are a “liability” rather than a benefit, especially because they are trained to fight fires in deep forests rather than cities.

“The private contracting companies are not trained or equipped to operate in this environment,” he said.

After claims that private firefighters didn’t even bother to coordinate with emergency services, California passed regulations in 2018 that banned them from using emergency lights or sirens, or equipping their vehicles to resemble official fire trucks.

That hasn’t deterred Hollywood’s one-per-centers. Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer who owns Palisades Village, a glitzy shopping center filled with luxury brand stores, such as Chanel, and an expensive sushi restaurant, called in several fire companies from the neighboring state of Arizona last week when the flames broke out. spread to development.

Caruso said the local fire hydrants were empty, so his trucks — each holding hundreds of gallons — saved the day. ‘Our building is standing. Everything around us has disappeared. It looks like a war zone,” Caruso pointed out bluntly.

Although many of them are primarily involved in installing fire prevention measures such as sprinkler systems rather than physically fighting fires, private firefighters now make up about 45 percent of all firefighters in the U.S., working in more than 300 companies.

Employers typically require firefighting certifications and prefer recruits who have already worked in the public fire service. Some of them say they can earn almost £40,000 during peak wildfire season by working just a few months a year.

The anger toward these companies is sure to raise the temperature even higher in scorched LA. But some wonder whether it is realistic to expect anyone, faced with the near-certain destruction of their family home, to do anything differently – selfish capitalists or not.